By Eric de Place
I have an untidy habit of eating while I'm on the computer. Unfortunately, my habit means that crumbs of sandwich or potato chips make their way into the crevices of my computer keyboard. It’s gross. And one way to clean a keyboard is with a compressed chemical canister (pictured above) that blasts the bad stuff away. But the other day, while I was merrily blasting away at my keyboard, I read the contents. Big mistake.
My little 10-ounce canister contains 100 percent HFC-134a a greenhouse gas that is roughly 3,300 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. Yikes.
A back of the envelope calculation tells me that using up my 10-ounce can of cleaner will have the same climate-changing effect over the next 20 years as burning at least 100 gallons of gasoline. With that much gas I could drive my trusty Honda Civic from my office in Seattle to New York City. And then back to Chicago. And I would still have plenty of fuel to spare for side-trips. All that climate wallop is packed into a canister retailing for $10.99 at the Office Depot around the corner.
This is not a good idea. I’m a little ashamed of my canister, but for the sake of the planet I’ve stopped using it. And it did get me to thinking about some ways we can make our offices friendlier for the planet. Here are a few, starting with the obvious.
1. Clean the old-fashioned way.
If there’s any good news about my climate-destroying keyboard duster, it’s that there is a pretty simple remedy: don’t use chemical keyboard dusters with HFC-132a. Not only is my canister a demonstrable hazard to planet, but there’s a substitute chemical, HFC-152, that’s every bit as effective with only about one-tenth the heat-trapping potential. Of course, even one-tenth the impact is far too large for a keyboard-cleaning device -- we should avoid those too.
In fact, I believe we should even go a step further and work toward a ban on chemical keyboard dusters altogether. Even using up a canister of the more-benign HFC-152 is the greenhouse gas equivalent of driving my car from Seattle to Portland, Oregon and back. Plus, let’s be honest, there’s very little practical use for the canisters. A feather duster, though not as zippy, works just as well. So does turning your keyboard upside down. So does a vacuum. So I think that we don’t need too-clever “market-based” solutions here -- and we don’t need to worry about pricing externalities -- we just need to ban the darn things.
2. Slay the vampires.
More important than keyboard-cleaning, however, is the problem of vampires. You may not realize that your office is haunted, but it turns out that one of the curiosities of the modern office, with its army of undead computing appliances, is that even after workers head home for the night, the office is still awake. And it’s still sucking power from the grid. These power-sucking appliances are sometimes called “vampires,” for their parasitic ways. (It has nothing to do with their Transylvanian accents.)
It’s a little know fact that even in “standby” mode these appliances are drawing power. Take the innocent microwave oven in your office kitchen: it may expend just as power keeping its digital clock running as it does heating up leftovers. And that’s not the worst of it. Appliances with transformers, such as cell phone chargers or computer power suppliers, are always drawing power – even when the device is off. It may not be very much, but it adds up over time, especially when the drain is multiplied across every device in an office.
It’s estimated that in the average residence, somewhere between 5 and 13 percent of all electricity is actually consumed by appliances when no one is using them. And there’s reason to believe that the share in offices, which are frequently chock-a-block with computers on “standby” mode -- still sucking energy -- is much higher.
According to Sightline Institute’s research director (and my boss), Clark Williams-Derry:
…different brands and models of the same kinds of appliance use wildly different amounts of power in standby mode. One compact disc player may draw 1 watt while idling; another might draw 30. Manufacturers have little incentive to improve the situation on their own, since they don't pay the power bills. And while energy efficiency geeks are aware of the problem, few retail consumers pay much attention.
The long-term solution is probably smart regulatory intervention. In 2004, California passed a law that imposed limits on standby power consumption. It took effect in January, so that (according to the Economist) "it is now illegal in California to sell a television or DVD player that consumes more than three watts in standby mode." Similar standards for other devices, especially PCs and printers, are in order.
Until there’s better regulation of manufacturers, however, there is plenty an office can do to put the vampires to rest: you can read all about them in Jeremy Faludi’s excellent article of May 2006 in Worldchanging. New chips reduce standby power use; better power strips do the same; and occupancy sensors can shut off power when a room is not in use. And that’s only the beginning. Plus you can always, you know, unplug the devices (or turn off the power strip), but the elegantly simple solution is also the easiest to forget.
Remember, slaying the electricity vampires isn’t just good for the environment, its good business sense too. Slicing 10 percent or more off the office power bill might save the company of nice chunk of change, perhaps even enough to buy free bus passes for the employees.
3. Think: location, location, location.
Speaking of bus passes, an office’s biggest environmental impact may actually not be inside the workplace. It may be the way that employees commute. Is the office situated in a place where nearly everyone must drive a car? Or can many employees choose pedal-power or neighborhood transit?
Now obviously, choosing where to locate an office is not an everyday decision. But in terms of the office’s environmental impact, there’s arguably no choice more important. Commuting accounts for roughly one-quarter of all vehicle trips taken in the United States – and transportation is the single biggest cause of global warming emissions in the country. What’s more, commute trips are generally the easiest trips for people to get out of their cars and into a more planet-friendly mode: there’s seldom need to carry cumbersome loads to and from the office; work schedules are highly predictable; and transit offerings are at their most generous during regular commute hours.
Generally speaking, offices that are located in-city tend to allow for more commuting choices and lower environmental impact. Transit services tend to be better in town. And traditional urban street grids can foster biking and walking more effectively than the high-speed roadways that are typical of sprawling locations.
Locating an office depends on a number of factors, of course. But because location can have a powerful effect on how much energy employees use just getting to work, it may turn out that the swanky “built-green” campus on the urban fringe is a worse environmental choice, on balance, than the drafty old building downtown. So when looking for ways to green your office, just bear in mind the old real estate adage -- location, location, location.
4. Buy carbon offsets.
As a further step, offices can consider purchasing carbon offsets to reduce or eliminate their contribution to climate change. Admittedly, there’s a fair bit of debate about the utility of offsets – mostly about whether the offset accounting is accurate -- but no one thinks that they’re meaningless. At worst, they’re a worthwhile gimmick. At best, they’re a market-friendly way to reduce emissions in the here-and-now.
My office, which is home to about dozen people during the workday, recently joined an offset program from a local company called NetGreen. With a price tag of just $241, including the carbon that we emit during our commutes, our offset purchase did a little good for the planet and it wasn’t exactly hard on our bottom line either. (I should mention, I suppose, that my co-workers are almost all cyclists, pedestrians, or bus-riders; and our office is powered by a carbon-neutral utility. So our offset bill is probably lower than average.)
While purchasing offsets doesn’t excuse us from taking other steps to soften our environmental impact, it offers an assist to the next generation of cleaner and greener technologies. Carbon offsets can help bring online those climate-friendly energy sources and power-sipping appliances that I hope will be the norm before it’s time for my retirement.
Eric de Place is a senior researcher at Sightline Institute, and contributes research and writing for the Cascadia Scorecard, especially on sprawl, economic security, wildlife, and other topics. He also writes for the Daily Score blog and contributes to a number of other Sightline projects. Sightline Institute recently put together a guide to the green guides to help sort out what's what.
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